Recruiting People to Run a Biodiversity Conservation Foundation

The task of recruiting people to run a biodiversity conservation foundation is a challenging one. This is a task that needs to be handled with a lot of care, knowing that the success of the foundation will depend, to a great extent, on the competency of staff employed to run it. Actually, based on my experience in matters to do with biodiversity conservation, I can assert that the task of recruiting staff for a biodiversity conservation foundation is much more exerting than the task of getting congressional approval for enhanced (biodiversity conservation) funding. To get the congressional approval, you just need to talk to the right lobbyists in the right manner. But to get the right staff to run a biodiversity conservation foundation, you really have to go the extra mile.

In recruiting people to run a biodiversity conservation foundation, you need to look at qualifications, experience, interests and general aptitude. You need to ensure that you are not influenced by one factor to the extent of overlooking the other important factors. This is where, for instance, you may encounter an applicant who has superb qualifications in biodiversity studies, but who has absolutely no experience in running a biodiversity conservation foundation. Alternatively, you may encounter an applicant who has lots of experience, but very dubious qualifications. In the final analysis, you may be forced to identify what is most important (between qualifications, experience, interests and general aptitude), and opt for the person who has that which you consider to be most important. But ideally, you should aim to get staff who have the right mix of all these things.

The effort you need to put in while recruiting people to run a biodiversity conservation foundation depends on the sensitivity of the role you are recruiting for. The whole thing can be compared to credit cards approval: where people applying for credit cards with high credit limits tend to be subjected to greater scrutiny than people applying for credit cards with low credit limits. This is because the credit cards with higher credit limits are much more sensitive to issue than the credit cards with lower credit limits. It is the same with the roles in a biodiversity conservation foundation: where the recruitment of people to handle sensitive roles in the foundation requires much more effort than the recruitment of people who are to handle less sensitive roles in the biodiversity conservation foundation.